Author: alexiamaddox

I am a digital sociologist who is deeply curious about how innovations in digital networked technologies become adopted and socially adapted. Our lives have been irrevocably impacted by the advent of the internet. This includes the ways we communicate, how we learn and find information alongside how we create and exchange things that have value to us.
Having watched the spread and adoption of the internet and studied its social impacts, I know that our relationship with innovations in digital networked technologies creates both intended and unintended consequences. Our early and unprocessed reactions are more visible in the real time pulse of social media. Our lives are archived and our online activities create digital traces that reveal more about us and challenge our understandings of privacy and consent. Without a clear intention or direction, we are engineering our future through our mundane daily practices and I think it is important for us to stop and consider what we want our digital future to be.
As a practicing sociologist, my research interests are in digital frontiers, community studies and research methods. This is covered in my recent book, ‘Research Methods and Global Online Communities: a case study’ which combines these areas and forms the basis of my study of emerging communities forming through online spaces and cryptography.

The ‘Food for Thought’ installation is proud to be a part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival in the Critical Mass collective. From the 12th of September to 22nd September you can find the pods hanging in the magic outdoor space of the Testing Grounds Gallery. Bring the kids or that random friend who likes to embarrass you by poking and prodding art. We’re keen to have you all engage with the installation. Details are below. You can also check out this video tour of the Food for Thought installation as it was in Rainbow Serpent Festival earlier this year.

Critical Mass @ Testing Grounds

1 City rd South Bank, Melbourne

Opening night Wednesday 12th Sep 6-9pm

Exhibition 12-22nd September

A crowding of crucial ideas, bringing together visual art installations, new media, conversations and projection. It is a space for an audacious community to gather and experience ambitious, experimental and critical art. Explore ideas about feminism, queer politics, technology, environment and mental health. Add your own crucial idea to the exhibition by painting a placard, exhibited around the Testing Grounds site.

We’re so excited to have checked out the site for the Food for Thought installation at this year’s Rainbow Serpent Festival (2018). Looks like we’ll be based at the entrance of the lifestyle village and will happily see the pods hanging from a tree near the Village gate and just opposite the market area. Resonating with the sounds from the Chill stage, we’ll be creating a walking space curated through found objects and studded with the pods hanging from the trees.

Here’s a few early pics of the site just to get things started and keep you updated with the installation as we create and install it.

This two pics is artist, Dianna Tarr, showing that, yes, you can poke your head inside them. Curious to see what’s inside?

This pic is the first hanging of a ProtoPod on site to test the idea in reality. It’s going to be awesome!

These pods are not only beautiful during the day but they will glow at night.

When sourcing your fresh food from a retailer, the distance that your food has travelled to you can be difficult to know. This information is a part of its food-print and good to know when you purchase a product.

Large multinational supermarkets often only label the country of origin on fresh produce. For example, you may find that your strawberries or mango’s might say which state in Australia they are grown, but this tends to be specific to particular fruits or vegetables.

A typical supermarket will provide similar veggies all year round, even outside of their local growing season. This is because they can source them from different regions within Australia and import them from other countries. You might see that your garlic has come from China.

How far has your food travelled?

Australia imports about 10% of all its fresh food, however considering the size of the country this still means that food must travel vast distances. If for example, you buy oranges imported from the USA or California, that fruit has travelled over 12000km to get to you.